


Drowning Me Sorrows; The Ramblings of Mr. Carlos Barat (One of Four)

by mresundance



Series: Drowning Me Sorrows (Libs/DPT RPS) [1]
Category: Bandom, Dirty Pretty Things, The Libertines
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:38:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Libs break up, Carl goes through an age 30ish/rock musician/identity crises; Didz and Anna try to cheer him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning Me Sorrows; The Ramblings of Mr. Carlos Barat (One of Four)

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t know these guys. Even if I did, do you think I would really write about them like this? No. It’s really fiction wherein I filched the framework of their lives for a point of reference. Blah blah blah. And I'm not Carl. At all.

  
_‘You’ve seen the difference  
And it’s getting better all the time’  
\- Modern English_

  
February 27th 2005  
5.27 pm

I think Didz has more hair than brains sometimes.

I am resolutely moping about the flat and he comes in and says I a) look slovenly b) need to come out with him. (And from the bedroom, Anna agrees.)

Of course I look ‘slovenly’ Didz, I am ‘moping’. ‘Drowning me sorrows’. Etc.

No, I do not need to come with you. I need to reach the bottom of this Jameson bottle tonight and watch Doctor Who on telly while Anna rings from her mobile and nags at me again that I should have gone with her and you.

I’m supposed to be lying about anyways. I’m not even supposed to listen to loud music. Doctor’s orders (a proper doctor, not an alien with a flying phonebooth). I have growths behind my ears that will someday enter my brains or lymph nodes and that will be the pathetic end of Carlos Ashley Raphael Barât.

‘You had _a_ growth behind _one_ ear,’ Anna corrects me. ‘And it’s been two months since the operation now. Doctor’s orders are void.’

I can’t even hear right out of that _one_ ear anymore, thank you very much. I hope it clears up sometime soon. Doctor said it might. Rather tired of having to say ‘what? WHAT?’ at people.

Didz says I am no longer the ‘sassy’ Carl he once knew (Anna agrees . . . she agrees with him enough they should just run off and together and leave me in peace). I tell him my Sass Factor wasn’t up to snuff apparently. Nobody wants an old skuzzy rock has-been. They might as well put me up in the old person’s home already and be done with it.

I’m nearly 27 and what am I going to do the rest of my life anyways now? I don’t even have Peter. What’s the point?

Rock is reprehensible. Punk is filthy.

‘Come on, you big lug, it’ll do you more good than sitting around sulking.’ Oh, so now I’m just supposed to throw caution to the wind and let them drag me out the door? Why can’t they just leave me to stew in misery and liquor?

Put on your leather jacket, Didz says, you look fanciable and rugged in that. Anna agrees.

Oh shut your gobs the pair of you. Pillocks.

  
February 28th 2005  
3.45 am

Got sloshed with Didz and Anna. Fwee.

Didz is . . . here. I think I just tripped on him in the dark. Stupid lump.

Missus is

?

Where _is_ she???

3.17 pm  
Glorious life and times of a (former) rock god: rum hangover and mysterious vomit in kitchen sink. Can’t be _mine_ , I have enough class to vomit in the loo, thank you.

3.20 pm  
It was Didz.

Filthy creature. He’s really quite annoying.

I hope we didn’t have sex.

3.22 pm  
Couldn’t have. I don’t have mystery hairs stuck to my clothes or person, nor heretofore unknown bites and/or scratches.

3.25 pm  
Couldn’t have. My libido’s been in hibernation for months now. I couldn’t get Wellington at attention if a gang of gorgeous naked scrubbers came and lap danced and offered to spank me silly before sucking me off and fingering me.

Stupid bloody Peter, stupid music, stupid bloody growths and operation and painkillers.

I lose at life.

3.40 pm  
Booted the dodgy Didz. He says he’ll give me a ring later.

Must remember to put the phone to the proper (hearing) ear.

6.30 pm  
Anna comes home chirping and prancing. She’s gone out and gotten shagged without me. I see that I myself and Wellington are not needed, I tell her.

She said, nonsense, was a bird she ran off with.

‘Oh really?’ said I. ‘You know, I would be up for that. I’ve had my 3’s. 4’s . . . I think there was even a time -’

‘With – Peter,’ she said. ‘Ages ago.’

Oh. Go and remind me then. Burst a bloke’s hopes of having ravenous buxom lovelies ravaging him from both sides. Go on.

‘Oh Carl. I just think our tastes in women is – disparate.’

Pffle. Using one of those 5 quid words of hers to disguise what she really thinks – that I’m either impotent or an old queer or both. Something.

I love it though, not the queer impotent bit, but those 5 and 10 quid words she has up her metaphorical sleeves. Catholic girl schools do wonders, not just for the intellect, mind.

8.01 pm  
I found a grey armpit hair. Doom. Gin and vomit and doom.

8.05 pm  
Oh God.

Will I become the crazy deaf old rock has been with long shaggy grey hair, bad teeth, and wobbly jowls?

Like Morissey?

  
March 1st 2005  
12.13 am  
‘Anna. _Anna_.’

‘Wot Carl?! I was sleeping!’

‘Why did you find me fanciable?’

‘ . . . . You are honestly asking that question? Honestly disrupting my sleep for that question?’

‘ . . . yes. I think so.’

Anna sighed and rolled away from me in bed.

‘It was the bum, Carl. I said to myself, oiy, he has a funny snozz but a lovely bum.’

Zzzzzz. When she snores it sounds like a bear is lying next to me. Funny for such a small pretty thing to have the proverbial nasal cavities of a polar bear. Not to mention the whole blanket-hogging that keeps my feet in the cold. And the sharp little elbows in my ribs. And opening the windows in the middle of January when she must paint her toenails again.

But whenever I get to thinking of shoving her off the bed she looks so darling, all soft skin and dark curls, smelling of mint soap and lavender. Book tucked under her pillow, or a crossword puzzle of sorts, a list of songs for a mixed tape. My heart does a treacherous little swoon.

Funny snozz?

1.35 am  
Called Didz.

‘Didz, what do you think of my nose?’

‘Wot? Cor blimey Carl –‘

‘Just please. Answer my question. It’s very important. It’s for. The NME.’

‘Why does they NME care about your snozz? They photograph you funny and make it look even bigger than it is or sommat?’

‘No, shut up.’

I hung up after that.

2.07 am  
Bathroom mirror is very unkind at this hour.

Where did my Jameson go?

2.11 am  
Hurrah for whisky.

  
March 5th, 2005  
11.30 am  
Went out for the milk and one of those reporter types leapt out of the bushes at me. They asked me what I was doing now that my band was gone.

‘Oh, I’m spending loads and loads of my time writing and having a great time. Obviously. Huge smashing solo career planned with a large marquee and suits with sequins and a chorus line of half naked dancing girls.’

This is why Anna calls me Mr. Rubbish.

12.07 pm  
Bored.

Tried to sit down and write some lyrics today. Was not unlike a car wreck on the M109.

I think I’ll try that internet thing again on Anna’s computer.

12.43 pm  
This google thing is very interesting. You can search for things with it and it will find web pages on the internet.

1.00 pm  
I looked up myself on google.

There are a lot of rubbish pictures out there of me.

I’m not that chubby.

1.25 pm  
Didz showed up to laugh at me.

He says I should ‘google him’.

I thought he was being lewd until he explained I should type his name in the google search box thing.

Oh.

1.30 pm  
I’ve heard of slash. Anna reads it. She’s saved some to her hard drive thing. She prints some stories too.

I know there is loads of Pete and I running about.

But there is also apparently some Didz and I shagging each other.

Didz won’t shut up about it.

2.15 pm  
Anna wanders by again.

Tears streaming down Didz’s face and I’d like to go hide in a kitchen cabinet if I could fit.

‘Wot?’ she says.

Didz, laughing, sounding like a hyena, points to the cursed computer.

Anna starts to laugh.

‘Anna!’ I say indignantly. ‘Did you know about this – what a woman thing? It’s. It’s.’*

‘Bloody fantastic! Surprised you found it Carl. I’ve had it bookmarked for awhile. Isn’t it a good laugh Didz? Carl in girly knickers? Wooohoohooohooo!’

Jackles, the pair of them. First class top of the line pillocks.

2.21 pm  
Now I am condemned to a life of being that crazy grey haired wobbly jowled queer transvestite ex-rocker.

It’s like Mick Jagger mixed with Eddie Izzard.

I like Eddie Izzard, mind.

5.06 pm  
Anna cowly says we could try that 3-some thing if I’ll pretend to be the second bird and dress in frilly knickers.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

  
March 7th 2005  
3.12 pm  
Didz says he’s keen on Anna’s idea and he’d be up for it.

Oh, spare me and go get yourselves married, you pillocks.

  
March 11th 2005  
3.21 pm  
Didz keeps coming around. He’s like a mangy lost mutt, only he has the chipper attitude of a golden retriever.

He reminds me of Peter, vaguely, in his innocence. Peter was innocent once, before he snorted his first line, somewhere thereabouts. Innocent in a pastoral, Wordsworthian sense. Sex an act of sweetness and surrender, buxom girls with rosed cheeks and Lucy, Lucy, Lucy who died and is now only the merest echo of memory.

Right.

But I’m afraid Didz would bring me my slippers (if I had slippers) if I asked him to. I must not abuse this or let it go to my head.

4.16 pm  
Settled on the couch with Didz and watching Doctor Who.

‘Didz?’

‘Hm?’

‘Would you mind nipping down to the store and getting us some whiskey?’

Of course he doesn’t.

9.56 pm  
Much liquor later.

I asked Didz if he would run around the flat and cluck like a chicken.

Asked him to stick straws up his nose.

Hop ‘round on one foot and sing Cher songs.

Take off all his clothes and run down the street and back screaming ‘We Are the Champions’.

He wouldn’t shave his head or his bits, but he says he’ll leave Cooper Temple Clause for me as soon as I get off my arse and start writing some mooooosica.

  
March 12th 2005  
10.12 am  
Annalisa comes home from a night of slaving over the turntables to discover Didz and I cuddled together with him rather naked on the couch.

She says we were so adorable and wants to be the meat of our sandwich. Didz agrees.

Oh hell, I just want my head to stop aching.

7.04 pm  
Anna won’t shut up about being the meat. Good gravy.

I told her she doesn’t want that because Didz with smother her in his wild locks and I would put her eye out with my nose.

It would be a happy death, at least, she said, sandwiched between two lovely musical blokes.

Oh, alright then. When she puts it that way.

I still want another bird around.

Anna tells me not to push it.

Hmph! She seems to forget who wears the trousers in this relationship.

Er.  
\------------------  
* [](http://what-a-woman.livejournal.com/profile)[**what_a_woman**](http://what-a-woman.livejournal.com/) ; explore at your own peril.


End file.
